Research security vs international engagement: New models

Rising geopolitical tensions and intensified global technological races have put the research world in a difficult dilemma.

So how do small, open, knowledge economies navigate the dual imperatives of international engagement and strategic protection in an era of geopolitical uncertainty? A recent report comparing distinct approaches in three Nordic states provides valuable insight.

“As open as possible? Comparing Scandinavian approaches to research security” is written by Tommy Shih, Stine Haakonsson, Kristin Fjæstad and Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr and was published in Science and Public Policy, scag056, in June 2026.

“How do you maintain the openness of science and global collaboration while protecting yourself against national security risks, unwanted knowledge transfer and espionage?”

This is the framework for a comprehensive Scandinavian and NordForsk-supported research project with the participation of researchers from Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Lund University and the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs.

Its study “maps and compares the way Denmark, Norway and Sweden are handling this new reality”, according to Science Report.

“Although the Scandinavian countries share cultural, linguistic, and political similarities, as well as advanced research capabilities, their institutionalised strategies for managing the tension between openness and security diverge in significant ways,” the abstract of the report states.

By examining the policy frames and the interplay between structural and processual factors in each of the three countries, the study reveals how these variations produce distinct national approaches and distinct governance outcomes.

Denmark: Safeguarding research from misuse

Following several reports from the national security actors highlighting an increase in threats against Danish research institutions from non-allied countries, in 2020 there was a demand from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science (MoES), the National Intelligence and Security Service (PET) and universities to develop guidelines to ensure responsible international research collaboration without compromising national interests.

The MoES’ Committee on Guidelines for International Research and Innovation Cooperation published the Danish National Research Foundation (URIS) guidelines for international research collaboration in 2022.

The guidelines contain nine points that are reported under three overall headings addressed to researchers: 1) identify risks and protect critical research; 2) know your partners for collaboration; and 3) protect your institution, its employees and students.

As Professor Brian Vinter, vice-dean at the Faculty of Technical Sciences at Aarhus University (AU), told University World News, the practical implementation of these guidelines is not an easy process and involves building institutional capabilities and mentoring processes that link science and technology, business and security policies.

“Implementation is situated at the level of each university and requires competencies and overviews that are still being identified and developed.

“These are not tasks usually dealt with by Danish university administrations, and there is a national commission across the universities to coordinate and support the implementation of the guidelines by the Forum for International Coordination and Cooperation (FIKS) committee,” he explained.

“The benefits to science from research collaboration across borders and cultures are indisputable. But the right precautions must be taken to ensure that our research doesn’t fall into the wrong hands and get misused. We’re already talking about this, and it’s going to become much more important in the years to come,” he emphasised.

For this reason, in 2024 AU launched a pilot project in collaboration with PET. As Vinter stated in the university’s internal newsletter: “PET’s campaign is a foretaste of the initiative AU will roll out over the next two years, which will affect researchers – especially if they collaborate with researchers from Russia, China and Iran.”

AU also has their own framework for the implementation of the URIS guidelines, published on 1 January 2026 and chaired by Vinter, “Security in international research and innovation collaboration”.

“I believe that trust-based collaboration is one of the great strengths of the Nordic countries,” he told University World News.

“We make a point of saying that when employees are background checked before employment it also means that no researcher needs to distrust their new international colleague, that they are checked and can be part of the community regardless of their nationality,” he stated.

“We are out of the pilot project and have been fully operational for some time now,” he added. Statistics are: 1162 people have been screened. Of these, 112 have not gone on (9.5%). It is important to point out that we screen [candidates] before the interview, so statistically only about 22 of those rejected would have been hired.

“It is also important to point out that these are individuals who are excluded, and therefore we do not see an impact on the total recruitment – in fact, we see a slight increase in recruitments from URIS countries – Iran is stable, while China has increased by 25%,” he noted.

‘Responsible, not less internationalisation’

Brian Arly Jacobsen, an associate professor in the department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at Copenhagen University and chair of DM University, a union for academic professionals, emphasised the importance of a “security-orientated” and “top-down approach” to protecting research, knowledge and critical technologies at a time of increasing geopolitical tensions.

“Danish universities and researchers need appropriate tools to identify and manage risks, and we cannot afford to be naïve about unwanted knowledge transfer, political interference or espionage,” he said.

However, he cautioned that complex security assessments should not be left to individual researchers alone. “Universities and public authorities must provide clear frameworks, relevant expertise, advice and institutional support,” he noted.

“At the same time, security must not become an objective in itself,” he said. “International research collaboration is fundamental to high-quality research and to our ability to address global challenges. If the focus shifts too far from opportunities towards risks, we may end up weakening both the quality of Danish research and its international reach.”

“The key issue is therefore not whether Denmark should take research security seriously – it should – but whether the Danish model strikes the right balance between security and openness.

“We should continuously assess whether our procedures support international collaboration rather than inadvertently discouraging it,” Arly Jacobsen said. “For DM University, the goal should be responsible internationalisation, not less internationalisation.”

Norway: Upholding academic freedom

In 2022, following up from the renewed Panorama strategy, the Ministry of Knowledge and Research authorised the Directorate of Higher Education (HK-dir) and the Research Council of Norway (RCN) to develop national guidelines for responsible international knowledge collaboration.

HK-dir and the RCN organised a relatively extensive round of stakeholder consultations, including input from three resource groups, 50 meetings, and 25 written inputs.

As University World News reported, “Guidelines and Tools for Responsible International Knowledge Cooperation”, published in early fall 2023, emphasised academic values and responsibilities, suggested measures for addressing ethical and security-related risks, provided overviews of relevant authorities and their roles, and discussed expected responsibilities concerning national authorities, institutions, scholars and students.

The policy processes addressing risks in the knowledge sector described above consist of several government-led tracks.

Although security services have become more vocal about and visible in the knowledge sector and several measures have been initiated by knowledge authorities, research institutions have also been active in signalling their institutional autonomy and the importance of upholding academic freedom and other liberal norms.

As the report noted: “Accountability was added as a new principle for knowledge cooperation in the new Panorama Strategy (2021–2027), in addition to quality, relevance, reciprocity and a long-term perspective. ‘Accountability’ is defined as: ‘consideration for fundamental academic values and national interests, including security interests’.”

In subsequent interviews and media reports, researchers and institutional leaders emphasised the need for balanced approaches and their particular mandate and role: “they [the security services] have their role; we have ours”.

When asked for comment, Professor Bjørn Stensaker, from the Department of Education at the University of Oslo toldUniversity World News: “While all countries are trying to take some national initiatives, the problem facing governments is to develop capacity for control at national level. This implies that a lot of responsibilities have to be taken by the institutions. How such institutional systems will look will be interesting to see in the years to come.”

He also identified the potential danger that security issues will be integrated into new systems of control and compliance that may have “unintended chilling effects of internationalisation, given the autonomy and different governance traditions at Nordic universities.”

He warned against increased government control, saying: “While most universities are well aware of the importance of continued international collaboration, it is still individual researchers that initiate collaborations and if they experience too much bureaucracy and hassle when trying to launch new initiatives, it will have severe negative effects on international collaboration.”

Sweden: Organising information security

Compared to Denmark and Norway, Sweden’s government has reacted relatively slowly to the changing geopolitical environment and its implications for research and higher education, particularly in terms of national guidelines.

In March 2023, the Swedish National Audit Office released a report on information security in universities, identifying major deficiencies in handling sensitive data. The report concluded that universities lacked effective processes for identifying sensitive (‘skyddsvärd’) information, had insufficient competence to assess strategic data, and that leadership had failed to organise information security adequately.

Later that year, under government pressure, SUHF (The Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions) published a checklist for global responsible engagement, building on STINT’s (The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education) earlier guidelines.

In May 2023, the government instructed three agencies, UHR (The Swedish Council of Higher Education), the Swedish Research Council, and Vinnova (Sweden’s Innovation Agency), to develop national guidelines for responsible internationalisation in education, research and innovation.

In 2024 the three government agencies finalised the proposed guidelines. Professor Mats Benner of Lund University, a specialist on university governance and chair of the board of directors of STINT, told University World News: “In Sweden, after years of discussion, it was high time to forge a road ahead for responsible internationalisation and align conceptual guidelines with practices among universities, funders, companies and other partners.”

In September 2023, special investigator Peter Egardt was appointed to examine how universities could strengthen security-related competence, particularly at the board level. His report, published in January 2024, revealed significant shortcomings in how higher education institutions manage security issues.

Many of the interview respondents in the report mentioned growing tensions between the European Union and China, the rivalry between the United States and China, and the war in Ukraine as reasons for heightened concerns over national security at the time.

The report found that while these factors put greater emphasis on national interests, increasing pressure on universities to address real and perceived risks and constitutional protections for scientific freedom grant researchers considerable autonomy.

For example, the report noted that Sweden’s ‘teacher’s privilege’ legislation gives individual researchers ownership of intellectual property arising from publicly funded research, a notable contrast to most advanced science nations, where such rights typically belong to universities.

Most Swedish universities operate as government agencies, with only a few private institutions. While this status theoretically places them under direct state control, the government has traditionally avoided interfering in day-to-day academic activities.

Instead, it sets strategic directions through a research and innovation bill every four years and annual policy instructions, delegating detailed science policymaking to specialised agencies responsible for funding, export control, higher education management, or ethics.

This governance model has long created tension between university leadership, typically drawn from academia, and government departments, as universities seek to safeguard institutional autonomy.

For Benner, government support needs to align with university leadership in order to take “a far more strategic approach to internationalisation and to couple intelligence and analysis with advice and planning of partnerships, mobility and collaboration”.

University World News asked Per A Nilsson, affiliated as a research fellow at the Centre for Regional Science at Umeå University, who recently published research on Swedish universities’ international collaboration in turbulent times, about the proposed national support function coordinating security in internationalisation to be located at the Science Council in Sweden.

“Across many parts of the world, universities and colleges are currently strengthening their capacity in this area, with a growing focus on identifying, assessing and managing risks in international research collaboration.

“Institutions need not only to recognise potential risks but also to be prepared to address them in a balanced and considered way. This requires both adequate resources and a shift in institutional mindset. For this reason, I strongly support the establishment of a national support function,” Nilsson stated.

“At the same time, there are several practical challenges to consider,” he cautioned. “For example, how should responsibilities be distributed among researchers, administrative staff, and institutional leadership? There is also a clear lack of tools to support the identification and management of risks.

“My main concern is that this ambiguity could ultimately lead institutions to withdraw from international collaboration rather than engage with it constructively.”

Professor Erik Renstrom, rector of Lund University and chair of the internationalisation committee of the SUHF, told University World News: “SUHF is pleased with the road Sweden has chosen so far.

“It requires a great deal from the higher education institutions. We already have much more developed procedures for research security, but it will remain in focus for the foreseeable future. This is, we believe, the best way forward to keep risk levels low while maintaining the benefits of international collaboration.”